The Creative Journey: News Update #3
The Start of a new semester commences as I leave behind a trail of paper
I had a lot of time on my hands this Christmas Break. As you know, I am a photography major and the last semester I created a portfolio for my street photography on Instagram. I hope to add more to this portfolio throughout the coming semester as I take on the Nature of Photography and the Concept of Photography in my coming courses.
Take a look at my portfolio here.
This Christmas break I took the time to learn a few new skills. I began by rediscovering the ukelele and refreshing my memory of chords that remind me of my first instrument with the guitar.
Meanwhile, I received a Kalimba as a Christmas gift and it is similar to the piano helping me understand triads in a whole new way that I began to wonder about 7ths chords that you can read here.
My discovery of the 7ths triad took me down a path of dominant 7ths, majors, minors, augmented, and diminished. Stretching far into 9ths, 11ths and so on.
A jazz piano teacher that my father knows suggested I learn the circle of 4ths and 5ths to get a better understanding of 7ths and so on. This little circle helped me learn so much more for understanding how to create chord progressions according to their key, understanding scales, the order of sharps and flats, and relative minors according to their tonic (or home note) for songs that I would like to compose in the future.
While I wasn’t learning music theory, I became interested in Chess. It kind of started as a joke but then I became interested in the type of mind-puzzling game it is apart from my initial curiosity, haha. I don’t take this concept too seriously but it is amazing to see how the most powerful pieces in chess are the most commonly overlooked in life. You can read about my chess experience from the perspective of a writer here.
I have also taken to the famous platform popular for writers of many genres called Medium where I have written many articles from November through January working through thoughts and documenting experiences as they came. I didn’t want to be too much of a bother to my readers here on Substack so you might enjoy reading through this roundabout of articles that I created over the break as I segue into the new semester focusing a little more on my photography.
I also plan to make a YouTube soon as a way to bring more traffic to my writing. I think it would be a nice way to make my writing a little more personal by adding a touch of authenticity by bringing my articles to life with my own voice as a writer. I’m thinking of creating playlists tailored to my writing with original narration, shorts for my photography, tutorials of the instruments I’ve learned, and maybe a vlog section for more behind-the-scenes kind of stuff that might help you feel a little closer to my creative journey experience.
None of this should take away from my writing which is the primary goal of my career and the main joy of my pieces. I hope you enjoy these works with me and will consider reading through my archive and sharing with your friends some of your favorite pieces.
Thanks again for reading!
Sincerely, Rosa de Saron CP